Pets: mourning

I lost my cat today. Dusty was 19 and a few months and finally lost her battle with kidney failure. After 19 years together, I miss my friend terribly. I knew her more than half of my life. With many family stresses and tragedies over the past 6 months, including losing my grandmother a month ago, it's almost too much to bear. I started crying this morning and haven't been able to stop. All the wonderful stories here about everyone's pets helps. With the healing stories, and the help of my husband, dog, rabbits and fish, I'll get through this. Thank you all.

I'm so sorry of your loss Dawn. It is hard for me to be alone after losing our pets a few months ago. Today was very hard working outside without my babies around me. I planted some flower bulbs by their resting place as a memorial for them.I know they're now at peace and out of pain,that's all that keeps me going now. My prayers are with you and your family Dawn' Sis'

Dear Dawn, how i feel your heartache, i have a very old cat too, take heart knowing you gave them all your love and a happy home, hoping the pain will get less but the memories will always be with you.You cry yourself to sleep and dream of the happy times. Love to you and all your family.

Oh, Dawn - I'm so sorry to hear about your kitty. :( It's so hard losing a friend like that, I know. I hope the raw hurt lessens soon for you and you'll be able to remember good things without the pain being so intense. ((( hugs )))

Oh, Dawn, I'm so sorry for you! It does hurt so much when you lose a pet! Your picture shows a beautiful, happy, well-taken care of cat. You should be proud that you gave her a happy life. And never doubt that she will be there waiting for you when you cross to the other side. Bless your heart!

DawnG you have brought tears to my eyes and I understand your pain and I wish I could give you a big hug and let you cry on my shoulder. I know that there is nothing that I can say to make it any better but if I could I would. If you need someone to talk to please email me and we can talk.
Would you like to start a memory garden for your baby Dusty? If you would then please let me send you some seeds to help get it started, sort of seeds of love for your baby.
Feel free to contact me at anytime.
Kit

Losing a pet is rough. I ended up taking in a cat when my sister in law could not keep it. It turned out to be something that from my point of view turned out that I got
more from the deal. This cat was a total joy to have. I had the cat for 12 years and
I had to put him down five months ago. I was upset a few weeks after whenever I would think about him but as time passed whenever I did think of him it would bring a smile to my face. I am sorry for your loss but in time the sorrow will lessen.

I lost my little girl kitty, CeCe, on March 9th, 2006 at the young age of 9 years and still miss her terribly and am fighting off tears right now (am at work). CeCe was part siamese and had the facial markings with the striking blue eyes and also had what I used to call her "silent" meow. She was the smallest of our 4-legged babies and was "Queen of the House :) She was never, ever, ill and then (around the time of the 'discovery' of the tainted pet foods) she went into severe renal failure and after $2,000.00 we still were not able to save her. We had a private cremation and I felt 'some' closure when I brought my kitty back home but the pain of her loss still is felt each and every day.

Take care and my deepest condolences on your loss of Dusty --- she reminds me a lot of my CeCe with her coloring and, CeCe's litter-mate brother is named Dusty...

DawnG, it's been a year now, right? I hope all is way better for you now. I just acquired my 4th kitty yesterday---some think that's too many, including the other three!!! But now I'm the grown-up, and I can decide how many is too many. What I wanted to say, though, is that ALL my previous cats died young. We always lived on busy streets, even though with acreage, and the kitties managed to want to cross the road at the wrong time. Now we live on a narrow, windy road, like a country road in the city. The cats seem smarter about cars, for some reason. They DO look. Our only fear now is the coyotes. They are part of nature, so say we all. The cats will NOT settle for an indoor only existence, so there you have it. They sure do appreciate the warm and dry when it's the opposite outside!

My point was supposed to be that I never have had the chance to contemplate growing old with my cats before. What a concept! At fifty-nine, I expect all the injections, surgeries and IV's to be for ME, not my cat! I've seen my friends go thru hell with their cat's health, and that's scary for me. Right now I have plenty of bickering going on, as you can imagine. I read somewhere NEVER to introduce a new kitty to an established group. Mr. No Name Yet is a year and a half, so won't get eaten or beaten, and I think rules can be bent at times. Any ideas on making them friendly, aside from lettiing nature take its course, are welcome.

Thank you to everyone for your thoughts, even though it was so long ago. A lot has happened since 2002 - some good, some very bad. I got a new puppy just after Dusty died. She's a Jack Russell/Spaniel mix and has turned out to be an exceptionally friendly, huggy, lovey dog. Chiana is my very active sweetheart. Unfortunately, that fall my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer and acute leukemia within days of each other, and five months later, she died at the age of 60. It was a shock and very hard to get over, especially because my mother-in-law died of lung cancer about a year later. In better news, my father met someone else to love and support him and we were happy for him and when he decided to get remarried. He moved out and gave me the house, as long as I took the cats as well. I had grown up with those two cats and I liked having them in my life again. Tigger was a tiger stripe who hated other cats, but loved humans and just enjoyed sitting in my lap. Spunky, aka Punk, started out as a grumpy cat who didn't care for attenion, but with age has become attached to humans and loves being petted, although she still gives 'love bites' . In 2007, I finally got pregnant after a long hard fight, and very sadly, I lost Tigger one week before the baby was born, at the end of November. She developed bone cancer and I found out about it one day before she died, but she got to spend one last night sleeping in my lap. It's now been 18 months since the baby was born and he's the light of my llife, but I also still have Chiana the dog and Punk the cat and all three of them get along quite well. Chiana plays with Aidan and she is the most patient dog in the world. Punk actually allows Aidan to pet her as he runs around the house yelling "key" at her, which is his word for kitty. Punk and Chiana wrestle and play together like they are both dogs, but I try not to point it out to the cat. Punk is 12 now and Chiana is 7 so I hope things stay stable and happy for a while. The door is always open for the next stray that shows up on the doorstep needing a little tlc and a home.

My mom lost two awesome cats between trackinsand's last post and this one; Tuffy got diabetic at age 10 and wasn't caught quite soon enough for insulin to save him though he fought like the feral barn cat he was when he wandered into my mom's life as a yearling or so. Cutter, sadly, appeared to have run into some highly illegal poison bait somewhere, and even worse he snuck away so she couldn't find him to bury him. I have a pic of the lovely, oak-and-pine shaded patch at the edge of her yard where Tuffy rests. Myself, I still tear up something fierce around the full moon, when I am easily distressed, if I get thinking of my old corn snake Den, who at 11 years with me outlasted every man, car, job, and home I ever had...tho my current sweetie is more than halfway to breaking that record and shows no sign of things changing :D.

It will be three years this September since he decided to eat right before clouding up to shed, which is a bad thing. What snakes excrete is very concentrated and very caustic, and when they eat right before they cloud up they usually excrete right before they shed. Den had done this before but he was getting old (he was 15) and this time his old skin wasn't separated enough to pull away and let the caustic materials out. His tail got infected and withered, and the infection was moving too fast toward his body cavity for amputation to have saved him even if there was a vet in this entire half of MT who knows reptile surgery, which I don't think there is. It broke my heart, but I was flat broke (this was a year before I got put on SSI after seriously 8 years out of work due to health issues) and had to euth him myself, which I did the night I discovered he was sick. He went to sleep tied up in the mustard-yellow king-size pillowcase he always traveled in (and we did a LOT of traveling together--schools, libraries, science fiction conventions, mental health care day facilities, you name it) after I slipped him in the landlady's chest freezer, and the next morning I buried him under a spare tire filled with yellow rise-bronze fall irises and California poppies. The flowers were chosen to complement his brazen orange-and-yellow-and-black coloring, though I never did get to see if they bloomed due to moving away.

My sweetie got out of bed for this disaster at one in the morning to be with me. Three years later I still cry, and if he finds out I'm crying he'll cuddle me and snuggle me and understand every minute. Then again, he remembers that I never ever once looked askance at him and never mind down on him for taking his darling rat Ozzy in to the vet at age 4.5 to be euthed for a brain tumor--and he appreciates that I never say anything about how long he cried that night after stripping the tank down and cleaning every trace of his friend away. But we both remember that the vet we used was so awesome she sent him a sympathy card!

The toughest thing about pets, especially birds and mammals, is that very very few of them live nearly as long as we'd like to keep them around unless you're into cockatoos or large tortoises. I'm not nearly as attached to my current snakes as I was to Den, in part because I have reliable human friends now that I lacked during his life, and I doubt I'll ever be *that* attached to a reptile again...unless I find another one with a personality like Den's, in which case I'll sign myself right back up for the eventual-grief freight train impact because it's worth it no matter what variety of life form you bond with best.